“It’s tough,” he said. “I mean, it will be tough to make it fresh. Because, you know, every movie is really
Madame Bovary,
right?
Madame Bovary
‘R’ Us!” He laughed. He was having fun.
The phone rang.
“What?” he answered, tough and rude, just like an executive ought to be. “If you could remove your tongue from my ass and say whatever it is you want to say . . . Uh huh . . . Right. Do it! I like it!”
He slammed the phone down, put both elbows on the desk and his chin in his hands, and stared expectantly at Elizabeth.
“So . . . sort of like
Clueless
meets
American Beauty?
” she said. After all, he was offering her cash money, and quite a bit of it.
“Don’t patronize me, Professor Smarty-Pants,” he said. “I don’t know if you can write a script even half as good as either of those. I don’t know if you can write a script at all, do I? I’m going out on a limb for you —”
“No, I just meant —”
“I know what you meant, I know what you meant,” he said, leaning across the desk at her, almost lying on it. He moved one hand, as if waving away smoke. “History. Ancient. Gone. . . . I’m not looking to you to marry two pictures we already saw. No
marriages,
honey. I want . . .
adultery!
”
“I just —”
“I want new! I want to stray, roam, betray the conventions. And find me . . .”
He paused. Slowly, seriously, he said, “Find me Emma Bovary.”
Elizabeth felt the cold beads of water on the Evian bottle. When students assaulted her with their enthusiasm, she learned to watch them and nod while trying to decipher their barrage of critical theory and undergraduate sentimentality. But this growling man was not a student. His enthusiasm was not youthful. Critical theory was not a phase he would eventually have to grow out of. And she was not his teacher.
Elizabeth took her wet hand from the Evian bottle and put it on her forehead. I really want to do this, she thought, surprised. And she suddenly very much wanted to please Mr. Larry Volfmann, too.
“Familiar but fresh,” he said.
“Fresh.”
“But
familiar.
”
“But . . .” She hesitated.
“Fresh?”
“No. I mean, yes. But . . .”
Volfmann glared at her. “But
what?
”
“But I’m an academic.”
“You’ll get over it. Look,” he said, pushing
Tikkun
at her, “I have a feeling about this. Trust me.”
And I don’t even have tenure, she thought.
“I’ve always dreamed of doing this project, but how the hell do you update
Madame Bovary
when every picture with an unhappy young wife
is Madame Bovary?
”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said.
“Then, I’m in the gym,” he said, paying no attention, “and I’m reading, and . . . here it is!” He smacked the magazine. “Concept. Clarity. Class.” He smiled at her, his boxer jowls lifting. “You’ve got the common touch.”
I certainly do not, Elizabeth wanted to cry out, offended.
“In spite of yourself,” he added.
“Oh. Thank you,” she said.
Larry Volfmann leaned back, his hands behind his head. He spun around, 360 degrees, in his leather chair.
“You on?” he said.
“Well, but, I don’t really have any experience . . .”
Shut up, asshole, she told herself. Way to talk yourself out of a shower of fucking riches.
“No. But you’ve got . . .” He thought for a moment. “
Seychel,
” he said. “You know what that means?”
She nodded. But he continued anyway.
“Common sense. I mean, that’s the translation. Good, common sense.”
“Yeah. That’s good,” Elizabeth said. “Yeah. I like that.”
“Seychel,”
he said.
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. She realized she liked him, even though he had read her paper on Flaubert in
Tikkun
and wanted to pay her a lot of money to write a screenplay for an updated
Madame Bovary,
to turn poor Madame Bovary into a “project.” She liked him even though he was buying Emma Bovary as if she were a new sweater, cashmere, but still; and buying her, Elizabeth, as if she were . . . what?
Oh, come on, now. You mean you like him
because
he’s buying you. Don’t be a prig about selling out, you prig.
“It’s oddly comforting to be a commodity,” she said.
“Back at you,” he said.
Greta remembered when Elizabeth was a baby, her beloved first child. When she woke up in the morning, her first thought had always been of little Elizabeth. To call it the first thought was not quite accurate, though. It was the continuation of last night’s thought, which was a continuation of that day’s thought, which was simply a continuation of the thought of the day before. Elizabeth had filled Greta’s consciousness. She was a beautiful baby with intense, dark eyes and, even then, a worried scowl that could burst into a smile so unexpected and bright it caused complete strangers to laugh out loud. Elizabeth’s eyes were still big and dark and round. She stilled scowled, too often for a grown woman. But she smiled, too, and when her big, wide smile appeared, it still broke through like a glorious surprise. Elizabeth’s whole face lifted into an expression of such benign, open joy that those around her knew the world was good and fair and our reward would come in this life; we would not have to wait for the next. Witnessing the transformation from pensive baby moodiness to generous baby joy had felt like a gift. It had always been Elizabeth’s unconscious, secret power. It still was. When she’d left the house earlier to go to this mysterious meeting of hers, she had turned her head just before the front door closed and the smile had been revealed and the people, or Greta, who was the only one present, had rejoiced.
Greta had existed in the baby’s beauty, in her moods, in her needs. Now, she realized, she existed in Lotte in the same way. Her mother’s comfort, her spirits and moods, her demands, and her sad, vulnerable needs had been transformed into the air she breathed, a steamy atmosphere as real as the mist that poured from Lotte’s humidifier, which Greta was careful to clean every day.
Lotte’s voice had wormed its way into Greta’s head. Lotte’s pain was as clear to Greta as if she felt it herself. The disappointment Lotte felt with each failed treatment, each unsuccessful doctor’s appointment, weighed heavily on Greta’s chest. Lotte’s joy, the intermittent, glorious moments when she struggled up from her illness and courageously enjoyed a new pair of shoes, a huge, garish sunflower, or a cookie—this was Greta’s joy.
“It’s like having a two-year-old,” she said to her husband. But how could Tony know what she meant?
“You have to separate yourself from her a little bit,” he suggested.
Greta looked at him, disturbed. Separate?
“Why is that a goal, I wonder?” she said. “I know it is. I know it’s what we’re always supposed to be doing, all our lives. The therapists so rule. But why?”
“Self-preservation?”
Preservation? Should she zip herself up in a plastic Ziploc bag and preserve herself in the vegetable bin in the refrigerator? Even though she wasn’t the one whose face was rotting?
“Don’t you think ‘self-preservation’ is just a nice contemporary phrase for selfishness?” she said.
“No,” Tony said. “I don’t. People need boundaries.”
She hated the way he said “boundaries.” It sounded as though it should be written with a capital B. Tony often seemed to capitalize his nouns.
“People
need
Boundaries,” he said again.
Perhaps People do, she thought. Tony would know. He was an authority on People. He looked authoritative, too, standing there, his rather large head with its pleasantly crow-footed blue eyes and firm, reassuring, smiling lips.
“Fuck people,” she said.
Elizabeth walked out of Larry Volfmann’s office still gripping her bottle of water, now empty, now warm. Most people thought Elizabeth willful, but she often felt her will was not entirely her own. She was a person who appeared arrogant and unmovable not because she made up her mind and then stuck to it but because she found it so difficult to make up her mind to anything at all. Elizabeth waited, and waited, and waited, hoping for that elusive bit of evidence that would finally and utterly convince her.
Sometimes there was no alternative before her, and then she would rush down a path as if pulled by gravity. It made people think she was ambitious and energetic. But I’m passive, don’t you see? That’s why I studied so hard in school—too lazy not to. And now this. I’ll do this because Larry Volfmann told me to.
“Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth realized she was still standing in the waiting room with her empty plastic water bottle. A young man stood in front of her, short, preternaturally tanned, his thinning blond hair gelled into alarming spikes.
“I’m glad I caught you,” he said.
Elizabeth was not glad, somehow, although she did feel caught.
“I’m Elliot.” He took her by the elbow and led her to another office. “Elliot King.”
“Look,” said Elliot King. “I’m sorry.”
He sat at his desk and put his feet up, motioning her to a chair.
“I’m just a businessman,” he said.
Elizabeth sat and looked past the soles of his Adidas at the businessman who was sorry. His brows were knit. He put a pencil to his lips.
“I have to warn you about Larry,” he said.
“You do?”
“I love him dearly,” he said.
Elizabeth nodded.
“He’s the boss,” he said.
She nodded again.
“The studio head.”
“Right.”
“I love him dearly.” Elliot stared at her. “But I’m just a businessman.” He threw the pencil onto the table, where it skipped like a stone. “Elizabeth Bernard,” he continued, “your head is spinning, right?”
She nodded.
“Heady stuff, movies,” he said. “Like champagne, right? You want to be in the business, right? Because it
is
a business. A business you want to be in. But who doesn’t? Every kid wants to be in the entertainment industry. But let me tell you something.” He leaned back so far that Elizabeth could see into his nostrils. “As a businessman. As the man who picks up the pieces.” He snapped his head forward and stared at Elizabeth with obvious hostility.
“Madame Bovary?”
he said. “
Who
are we kidding?”
Elizabeth did not know what to say. Was this planned? A loyalty test? She shrugged, hoping that did not commit her either way.
“Elizabeth, Elizabeth, the man is sincere, don’t get me wrong. I love him dearly.”
Elliot’s phone rang. He picked up the receiver, motioning for her to wait. He nodded, grunted once or twice. “The murders are
boring,
I told you that,” he said.
Elizabeth tried to look intelligent and interested and comfortable, but she was hot with embarrassment.
“I love you dearly, you fuck. Just give me a cooler murder, maestro.”
He hung up.
“Business,” he said apologetically.
Elizabeth shifted. She was having trouble focusing on Elliot. She had not eaten and she was feeling faint and far away. She felt her belly was sticking out and wished she had not worn this shirt. She wondered if she would ever find her way home.
“I know this industry,” he said. “I know the marketplace. I know your patron, too, Professor. I love him dearly, but the man is like a dog with a bone when he gets these ‘literary’ ideas, gnawing and slobbering all over them and then, what? Drops them in the dirt. Look, I’m just a businessman, but, whim or no whim, Larry Volfmann is a businessman, too, and movies are a business, and bad business is bad business. And Madame Bovary . . . who I love dearly, by the way . . .”
He held his palms out.
“You get my point?”
Elizabeth said, “I’m a little confused, actually.”
“Need I say more?”
Greta was on her knees weeding when Elizabeth got home. Her daughter did not look sunny anymore. Greta stood up. “How was Mr. Wolfman?”
“Volfmann.”
“Wolfman, Volfmann . . . Did you hit traffic?”
She put her hand on Elizabeth’s cheek, leaving a smudge of dark, rich dirt, and wondered if this tall grown woman dressed in black who drove a car and plucked her eyebrows could really be her daughter, her little whining Elizabeth, her baby.
“Mom . . .”
Yes, she decided as Elizabeth wrinkled her face in an unattractive, hostile way. She could.
“Mom, I got a job. Then this asshole told me not to take it —”
“Volfmann?”
“No. The other one. Elliot King?”
“Oh! His mother is my client!”
“So that settled it —”
“His mother wanted a waterfall, totally wrong for the space, but I must admit the pergola really does look great —”
“So, I need an agent,” Elizabeth said. “I’m supposed to write a screenplay.” Then she smiled.
Greta was suddenly elated, and wondered, not for the first time, that the moods of her children were such powerful masters, causing her own moods to do their bidding so readily. She felt herself about to clap her hands in a show of excitement as she had done when Elizabeth was a child, but caught herself and pulled back before any damage was done. Elizabeth did not like being “infantilized,” as she put it.
“I’m so proud of you, darling,” Greta said, instead.
“God, you don’t seem very excited,” Elizabeth said, and headed for the kitchen, pouting.
Greta followed. Her son, Josh, now off in Alaska on a geological dig, had always been less talkative than Elizabeth, but his feelings were easier to read. Josh had been a cheerful boy, boisterous as a child, usually outside running or digging holes like a dog. Sometimes, he would come to his mother and say in a plaintive voice, with no explanation, “It’s ridiculous.” That’s how she knew he was unhappy. It was a simple, direct communication, and she could then go about solving the problem. But Elizabeth had never been direct. Greta sometimes thought of her daughter as a ski slope in the Olympics, the ones full of moguls and poles with shimmering orange flags.
“Anyway,” Elizabeth said, sitting at the table, “I’m suddenly a screenwriter. Can you believe it? I’ve been anointed. I’ve been plucked from the toilers of the academic field to write a movie. Every undergraduate’s dream. It’s bizarre. The guy is serious though and I kind of liked him, even if I’m just a whim . . .”